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Spockie-Tech
Site Admin
Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 3160
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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Integrated circuits (IC's) make the intricate insides of a swiss-watch look like something made from lego.
The size of the tracks, and silicon junctions inside are finer than a hair, and are subject to the same quality control issues that larger scale engineering is.
A poor photo-etch job, bad QC on the silicon and doping process chemical purity, too much or too little temperature on the laser-soldering that joins the silicon wafer to the pins or any one of a thousand items can go wrong and leave the circuitry visually perfect outside, but just a single bad joint inside will stop it working.
If you slightly bend just one cog in your mechanical watch mechanism, it will still look like a perfect Rolex outside, but wont tell time at all..
Power electronics that deal with many amps of current going through them will usually smoke or burn when something goes wrong, like a high pressure hose bursting, but low-power electronics like microprocessors, memory and other micro-amp control circuits will often die but look fine from the outside of the black box.
Nothing much you can do about it except locate and change the faulty part. _________________ Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people
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Sat Dec 17, 2005 6:10 pm |
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